Tuesday, December 17, 2013

New tricks, or the lettering magic

Here's a recent video I made with Bá for a lecture we did about comic book lettering. After years lettering my comics in the computer thanks to the fabulous work of letterers and font wizards like Richard Starkings (who I had the pleasure of meeting recently in Leeds, his home town, during Thought Bubble), Nate Piekos (whose great fonts and balloons have been helping us tell Umbrella and Sugarshock stories) and many others, I have recently decided to apply myself on the art of hand lettering. I always had crappy handwriting, which distracted the eye from the drawing when put together on my comics, but after meeting Craig Thompson, Dustin Harbin, Cyril Pedrosa and many other artists whose lettering also helps to convey their art styles (which is the case in most of the european artists), I decided to figure out what my stories would look like if I hand lettered them, so I've been practing and experimenting with different tools. A part of me – the part that inks everything with the same brush – wants to letter with the brush and see how would that go, but I guess I would have to draw a little bigger to pull that off. Seems to work with Paul Pope, and I know he draws pretty big.
I'm still not satisfied with my skills, but it's fun to learn with the mistakes you make while you're discovering a new world.

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